Authorities in Vietnam have charged a man with rape after an American student said she was assaulted while in her bed during a group holiday.
Nguyen Thi Quynh Tam, 24, said she was raped on July 5 and pressured by the man’s family to accept money and not go to the police.
She said the police also initially urged her to settle the matter privately.
Tam’s candor is unusual for Vietnam, where sexual violence is rarely discussed publicly, but she said she wanted to speak out to help protect other women.
“I’m doing this not just for me. But for everybody else that has been harmed,” said Tam.
After she sought help from US officials and a US lawmaker, officials confirmed on Thursday that they had charged a 23-year-old man.
Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Pham Thu Hang said authorities had initiated legal proceedings “in accordance with Vietnamese law”.
Tam did not respond to questions about alleged police pressure to settle the case.
Tam, whose family moved to the United States when she was five years old, returned to Vietnam in May for a banking internship, hoping to reconnect with her family’s homeland.
She joined a group of acquaintances on a July 4 trip to a resort in Phu Tho, near Hanoi.
The group stayed up late and when she went to bed, Tam found herself locked out of the room where she expected to sleep.
She found another bedroom and fell asleep with the door unlocked, then awoke to the 23-year-old man kissing her neck.
Tam told him not to touch her, but he persisted and climbed on top of her.
She pushed and punched him and shouted, “No!” But he pinned both her arms and raped her.
Afterward, she said she blamed herself and struggled mentally.
Others in the group they travelled with told her the man was from a wealthy, politically-connected family and she was unsure what to do.
Tam said the man apologised twice on July 9, in a note and during a phone call.
On July 11, Tam and friends of her family met with the man’s father in an encounter suggested by members of the group she travelled with.
She said he asked how much money she wanted for not involving the police.
He called five days later, again offering compensation, she said.
In an email to the The Associated Press, the father said the two had been “intimate”, but he declined to comment further.
He said his family had “no intention” of pressuring Tam to drop the case.
Tam said that after she reported the incident to police on July 21, they took her back to the room where she said she was raped and asked her to reenact the assault, leaving her distraught.
The next day, she said, police urged her to meet with the 23-year-old and to sign a statement saying she had refused a rape kit and a lawyer.
She refused.
The police again asked her to settle while she was getting mental healthcare at a Hanoi hospital, she said.
“A part of me is gone. And it’s in that room,” she said. — AP
